>> tomorrow, at&t ceo sits down for a conversation with david rubenstein. 12:45overage begins at p.m. eastern. powell will hold a news conference after the fed meets. next, we will hear from three producers of the pbs documentary the facebook dilemma. they talked about their investigation. this is about one hour and 20 minutes. followsht's symposium

the mantra think globally act locally. are fiveere were -- we miles from facebook. social media platform has great media impact. students strive to intern there. the decisions made by facebook echo across the world affecting the platforms more than 2 billion monthly active users. last october, pbs aired a documentary entitled the facebook dilemma which investigated the companies affect on democracies across the globe. tonight, we are fortunate to have three people involved in that project to explore the story behind the story. including the challenges in covering a social media platform.

after brief introductions, we will turn to a panel discussion about how the facebook dilemma came to be and what takeaways these journalists have from their experiences. we provided audience members with notecards and as questions occur, please tell free to write them down. they will be collected and forwarded to me so that for the last half of the panel, we can focus on questions from you. now, for the introductions. anya is an award-winning producer and journalist to joint frontlines independent journalism group in 2014. having begun her career as an assistant producer. in between she spent nine years at 60 minutes, working on stories that ranged from the violence in mexico to the destruction of coral reef, to the lack of ability for -- lack of accountability for prosecutors accused of misconduct. she graduated from

the university of california and columbia universities graduate school of journalism. james jacoby is a founding member of frontline. in addition to the facebook dilemma, he recently produced war on the epa, which investigated how scott pruitt went from fighting the agency to running it and rolling back years of policy. his film told the dramatic story of a guantanamo detainee released from the controversial u.s. prison after more than a decade. in collaboration with npr, the film illustrated the struggle over freeing prisoners once deemed international terrorists. he worked for 60 minutes, his investigations revealed wrongdoing by major banks, credit reporting agencies, disability lawyers, and arson investigators. prior to joining 60 minutes he worked for cnbc and the nation. he reported on a range of topics from youth politics in pakistan to the

european debt crisis, to the rebuilding of new orleans after hurricane katrina. james has received several honors for his work, he is a graduate of the university of pennsylvania. dana priest has been a reporter for the washington post for 30 years. she covers mostly national security issues and has been a reporter and contributor to pbs and a contributor to nbc, cbs news, and 60 minutes. priest has received numerous awards including a pulitzer prize in 2008 and 2006. she is the author of two best-selling books, "the mission," and top-secret america, the rise of the new american security state. she is also the cofounder of

pressuncuffed.org. thank you all and thank the audience for coming here on what has turned out to be a dark and stormy night in palo alto. james, where did the idea for this documentary come from and how did you initially start your reporting process? >> the idea initially came -- anya and i were trying to remember it this morning. we were working on the epa film. anya lives out here in the bay

area. we were recognizing there was a story to tell -- this was after the 2016 election. there was a lot of talk about russian interference and all sorts of security concerns. basically what happened was our epa film aired in october. in november of 2017, the testimony of the general counsel's from facebook and some of the other tech companies appeared in congress. that was really the moment when anya and i decided this was something we need to look into. in part, because of the non-answers from the attorneys at that point from the companies about what had happened during the election. we just thought it was good to look into. >> what was the first thing you did? >> the first thing you do any time is read up as much as you can. i think talk to people about who are some of the smartest people in the field to talk to. both critics of these companies as well as people that have worked for them. anya is really an expert at finding current and former employees to

speak to. you really speak on background interest and get the lay of the land. it was really to create a database of people that we could reach out to and have conversations about. >> i know when you walk in, you are greeted with a smile and a nondisclosure agreement, employees sign these and company lawyers often police them. how did you get people who signed nda's to speak with you and did lawyers get involved? >> this was probably the most difficult story -- i had a hard time getting people to speak, even off the record. people were incredibly nervous. there was a lot of networking. a lot of going around and talking to one person. they would introduce you to somebody else. people seem very reluctant to go on camera or even give their name. it is a tight community and people are worrying about appearing to be

critics of their previous employer. >> the other reluctance from the nda's is about naming specific people or talking about specific events. a lot of people that ended up speaking on the record really didn't want to talk about anything specific. the specific person especially. that specificity may have been a trigger for some of the agreements. there were a few people that were kind of unconcerned with the nda's. >> most people were very different. >> did you ever get the sense

that somebody would talk to you? >> yeah, definitely. someone at the company, not necessarily lawyers. that is a great transition. dana, you have covered intelligence agencies. how did reporting on facebook compared to what you reported on intelligence? >> it rang all the alarms. they were more worried than the cia people, the people who worked at the agency. they spend their whole lives in a classified arena. i found that these people who had much less to lose because there was no way someone who started talking to us would be legally prosecuted, that would bring so much publicity. they were culturally so scared. i got involved -- i had already started looking at facebook for the post. talking to an intermediary, phil bennett, who brought me into the project. just from that experience, the comparison between talking to cia people about classified information, dod people about operations, and here i was in the civilian america having this very strange experience. part of it was a lot of these people were very young. they were probably scared to death. how does a company that claims it is a community based happy company that is positive instill still that in people? it rang every alarm bell. my particular

interest was what was happening overseas. i had done a little bit of work on that. also, i followed some basic rules for stories and journalism. always follow the money, which we didn't do. that is a tried and true mantra. the other is who knew what when? that is one of the main things we started to pursue. once we got our handle around a little bit on what we were going to do, we wanted to say who knew what when? we drew that out in the foreign area.

for people who aren't journalists, the one thing i would like to explain is that even though a film or article may come off as authoritative, usually you do not start with a and get to b. it is a squiggly

line to get to the end. that is a process i think every story follows. >> i think when dana joined us, in part what she brought to it was thinking about the who, what, when aspect. we knew we were going to have to go chronologically in the film. one of the interests was who was talking internally and externally at the company warning about all sorts of things that then reared their head and ended up on the front pages after the 2016 election and onward, whether it be privacy concerns or concerns about malicious actors. all of those problems, it was a really

helpful way of us structuring our reporting to fill in chronologically what was happening in terms of insiders and outsiders talking about some of the issues that ended up being major problems. >> tv works best with pictures, pictures need a narrative arc. as a storyteller, what choices did you make to visually convey how the company was operating and what its impacts were? >> we had a phenomenal archive coproducer on the film, megan robertson, who is an expert at finding footage. really, kind of giving the mandate by our executive producer to think of archival footage as investigative reporting, where you are digging into the archives to see what it was that

the principles, whether it was mark zuckerberg saying about particular issues that we would investigate or test whether that you are digging into the was happening inside the company. megan relied at first on something that was from the university of wisconsin, the zuckerberg file. it was a research professor who was assembling everything mark zuckerberg had said since he basically became a public figure in 2004-2000 five. whether in video, audio, in print, and chronically. megan, there were lots of holes in the archive,

megan would then research that. basically, that was one way to bring this to life. >> in setting up new interviews, i know both 60 minutes and frontline you had been able to figure out some way to get people to talk about extremely controversial topics. i wondered what happens when they regret what they said? >> the main way i think we get people to do interviews is by being genuinely interested in hearing their side of the story. to comment everything that it would be better to know your side of what happened if there is something you are worried about, tell us so we could really understand the full scope. we have had instances where people are not happy with their interviews. show less >> there was a couple people

during the interviews where they wanted to say something off the record. they would either say stop the cameras or something. even if they didn't say stop the cameras, we would of course honor that. we always said in the beginning, if there is something you don't want to have on camera, that is fine. part of the process is figuring out what the story is. there is a lot of wanting to figure out the story is in the second is what can you get on camera once you figure that out. they are not always the same. knowing what the story is is the most important thing. you can always find ways to somehow get on camera or in the narrative. the first half of the film, for those who haven't seen it, is really largely about the business model that changed facebook from something we know best, zuckerberg connecting you with kids, family, grandchildren and all that. to a multinational corporation that is everywhere and so dominant. we even had to sort of train ourselves and it didn't really work all the time

to call them a corporation. we actually never do that in the film. i remember trying in the script and it felt so weird. they were so good at telling you there was something else. for those of you, including myself, who are not huge facebook users and still didn't understand the business model, that is what we wanted to explain. that is huge when you go and become a public company, no matter what company you are, the dynamic of the company becomes the same. you have to please your stockholders. you do that by making more money. that is where the business model starts to change. in the end, it ends up doing some bad things, unethical things.

we do meandering three-hour interviews with people. sometimes, we stumble on things that we did not anticipate talking about at all. at the end, people say we are running up against something i feel nervous about talking about. we want to respect people's boundaries. afterward asall is they do and say i am not uncomfortable -- comfortable with something i said, we will always hear them out and try to understand what it was. was it proprietary or are they embarrassed? can we talk about -- the main regret? someone from facebook was happy with their interview. tot was difficult and we had listen to their concerns.

the endt something -- of the day, we decided that they felt that they were not properly prepared for the interview. that was on them. prepared theperly public affairs people who are our intermediaries telling them what we wanted from these two days at facebook. >> one last thing i would add to that is frontline does something unique which is we have a transparency project. for most of the interviews, we publish the entire transcript of the interview online. video, you can watch the entire idiot and also read the transcript. the reason we do that, is we feel like it is a public record and it is important for the

public to know. hope is judge what we the story as she told it. defend against allegations of being biased because it is all there. the source material we are working from. it is a very strange position as lawmakers to do that because no one really does that. it is important to frontline to do that. we are transparent about that. people that have been unhappy with how they have been edited and things like that, that happens occasionally. i think we generally do a good job of that, being fair and hearing people out and properly characterizing them. that is what we do. their transcripts are out there. show >> there are 29 of those and one thing that i think is interesting is you have highlighted in the transcript and in the interview what you used in the actual documentary.

the learning project of a look at the editorial judgment, you could see how did they select 30 or 40 seconds. the favorite one i watched was with president trump's current campaign manager and i wanted to ask you, what is it like to interview somebody who says directly to your face that the press are the enemy of the people? >> he tempered that to some degree after we had an exchange about it. it is odd that we actually had that exchange in an

interview about facebook, that is really what the interview was about. how the trump campaign used facebook as an advertising tool and also what had happened, how he responded to the idea that there was a disinformation campaign that may have helped his candidate. we got into a discussion about the enemy of the people charged and he dialed back and said not all the press is the enemy of the people. he feels as though -- it is a long and laborious exchange that happens to be out there. what is weird about it is that when you put your transcript out there and you are transparent about it, on youtube, the vitriolic comments about the interview as if it was some sort of battle between me and brad parcell is kind of astonishing. there is a lot of comments, predominantly comments about left-wing media challenging him. it is a strange thing to have your transcripts

out there. ethic is fantastic. people can judge for themselves. >> >> speaking of the transcripts, which you can see at frontline.org. the two really interesting people that are not in our film that are very thought-provoking and i would recommend you looking at, one is the privacy expert at facebook. he had previously worked -- she was a phd in computer science, i think. his explanation of what he thinks as privacy is very different than what probably most of us would think of. his is the right to not have your data taken in order to manipulate you when you do not

know it. it is not just not knowing where i live or my social security number, the idea of unknown manipulation. it is much worth reading. the other one is donald graham. the former owner of the post. we got him to -- we tried to get them to talk about zuckerberg. he wouldn't really tell us much that was new or interesting. what is interesting is what he said about who should be the regulator of speech, and do you really want the government to do this? do you want private industry that is somewhat reactive to public demand to do it? i think he makes a very good counterargument to those that say it should be the government.

in that same week he was talking, vice president pence was dissing google i think it was. claiming that their algorithms were tweaked towards so, those would be the two i would recommend that are not in film. > following on that, one person's responsible operation of a social media platform is censorship.erns how do you view facebook as a about the sion maker elevation or suppression of content that could excite create -- or create division. >> that is the dilemma. we had a great conversation with chief of security of the company and basically been

laid out the dilemmas bout be careful what you wish for. you have a powerful internet latform here and other platforms and what happens if pro-active and kind of regulating speech and what down the line hen their a.i. tools detect speech and take it down before it is posted and you could have orwellian scenario and he name question of thinking about leadership at these compani companies. as critical as the film may have crews with mark zuckerberg in someone else in line they are keep it abligation to neutral political platform what

if there were a --ions that were biased biased. i don't know the solution to that. i think that is something that at campuses should e discussing as to where we want to draw the lines. i think it is a question seriously and are thinking and have been reluctant power paubecause once you take responsibility for you own it and taking a approach with n not just good business sense but was a philosophy behind it. 'm quite afraid of the alternati alternative, of what they talk this could of where lead. because they are basically

naccountable companies that have tremendous power over the society. speech in our ne thing is for sure, there needs to be some transparency to judge how what they are doing doing -- theyherg are doing it. society.d about our in the film you present evidence hat facebook's operations destabilize come sis in myanmar, philippines and ukraine. i wonder if you have seen they have at developed the infrastructure and in the e mitigate that future? >> they want you to think they have but i don't think that is because they are both trying to deal with the ountries that you named and that are having the worst roblems but they are expanding at the same time. and they are relying on local

them.rs they call n.g.o.'s ocal small and sometimes news organizations hat are struggling to be news organizations and all of a sudden they get a contract from i call tell e the ensors, they call them content moderators and i don't say that necessarily in a bad way because there are things that need to be taken down and were not. conference in santa f fe, new mexico and it had 28 including rnalists we were mongolia and talking about facebook and she said the problem is exactly the that the ukrainians had which had to deal with a lot of who are anti democratic

trying to suppress the pro emocracy voices by complaining en masse to facebook about something they were saying that speech and facebook not iting the capacity to notice was hate speech and buckling nder the pressure of a lot of complaints. this woman lia described exactly that. it continues to expand and do capacity.ve the things we said facebook opened to some extent most interesting things they let us sit in on that o -- meetings. slur list.ve a for every country or developing in every country they operate in and they recognize

change all the time given the context of slur. a slur today might not be a slur tomorrow and there are people who are trying to figure out how to do the right thing. issue.s is a huge i'm not sure we saw that there amount of resources devoted to it. >> you are local, have you seen people at from facebook it the film? -- to film? a strange experience it work on these because after ward it and it is nice to be here tonight because i'm looking forward it see what thought because i don't get a lot of reaction. i'm here for some people in the others helpful long the way.

surprisingly little feedback besides friend and family. >> but it has done well in terms of streaming. one interesting anecdote which as from somebody there still was that a lot of younger the bus out to men lepark to the -- menlo park the city and they were atching in the days after the film aired. nd there were a lot of questions internally because institutional memory when you younger employees is short. a lot of younger engineers and designers and others that necessarily re not familiar with some of the what y we toeld and that was discussed at the company bout privacy concerns or other

things. heard from someone that there were a lot of people internally that were watching it and had questions of people nternally about what was known and getting a good sense of -- a better sense -- of the history company and how it approached different problems ike the speech problems like 2008 the company was enormous having to come up with a bunch of rules. so we would tell the story of sitting down to come up with what was essentially a state.ution for a nation what speech will be permitted. hat is the first element of regulate dark it some of te and i think the younger employees didn't know that history.

they are s great if learning something. >> since your film "new york done additional each ing and i wonder for of you, what would you like to your next reporting on facebook? what do you want to the to know? it is so simple mi-mindesimple. know who knew what went about some of these issues. -- our film is different from reporting.imes" we didn't get into the learn and their role in decision making. i think that is critical because stadium whe stage that we are a stage of companies that are

and ing innovation competition and to me it is like he industrial revolution and reforms that eventually came in. maybe at that phase where we are not quite there yet but at some point people are going start deciding how power they are going to give to them now that they know have.uch power they the process of knowing how much power they have is just coming to late. >> through a dual stock tructure that gives his shares greater power mark zuckerberg is the controlling shareholder in facebook. he could pursue policy the that and t maximize profits annual report reminds people. e could favor trading off revenue for approaching democratic participation. id you see any evidence of all truism or civic participation in is leading kerberg

facebook? yes, that is the short answer. there are a lot of our ellian names inside -- orwellian but there is a department thinking about how as help with all sorts of issues of social good. it thing we had helped remind ourselves of is this is a very good service for people and it is something we many of us do. emergencies it can be very useful and in terms of ools getting information out quickly networks. thing with that, -- when it to invest

came to investment in security the company that deserved more attention and there were internally saying needed more attention and resources i made some bad decisions. now they are saying they are investing in that stuff. what that means when it comes to protecting elections from d isinformation campaigns, bringing down fake accounts. terms.the mid we need to see how things go future. in the he other thing is basically -- there's major questions still to be asked company's size and da data. the issue of an antitrust hasn't been addressed

, and ignificant way thinking about data differently what usts differently and this company has and how well it whether in terms of benefits more than its factual consumers. most fun things with intelligent journalists is the afterhours alk because we get object successed with the -- obsessed with the stories. it in itse understand elements and we can talk late at night through what is more this element, that element. imagining what are the solutions of these problems. really address that in the film but it is something we couldn't help d but talk about. my fantasy world is, would it be possible to have a nonprofit facebook?

and what would that look like? that solve the problems? are the problems created because make the most profit possible? or what if you took money out of equation. could you have what we like about facebook, which is i think the idea that you can and family? friends interested the same questions what are the possible solutions. it is hard to make a film about that. that is one of the challenges is the things that we are most nterested in are when it comes down to storytelling it is hard to tell the story about the the e when you focus on past and present. but those are the most important and most interesting.

problem is what numbing.n mind my favorite line is there is a to fix icated to trying the fake news problem and a fact said we need hecker for the middle east that is a crazy thing. rying to check a two-hour film takes weeks. you can't fact check the middle east. but the company that we were dealing with do care and want to solve the problems and some were surprised by the impact the company has had and trying to is e the problems overwhelmi overwhelming. you do have questions ask your hand and we will one pmore round. role at the university of maryland you teach

lasses and do research about press freedom and misinformation. information do you wish they would take it heart? >> they are operating in -- they are in some countries that are not democratic and they non democratdemocratic as unfortunately as were as in the beginning when they forces.ted democratic what happened after the arab dictators all the realized we have to figure out thing that just happened wave that as a huge extended far beyond the middle we won't let it happen again and the authoritarian regimes learned

do for al media can them and i don't think necessarily facebook was kept that.st of i teach a class once a year where i reporting class give every person an imprisoned do an ist they have to intimate profile of and find heir family and colleagues and all of that. so, i have learned a lot about who are imprisoned all around the world and the imprisoning are them have all the cards. they have the keys to the kingdom. to the extent that facebook realize they have empowered them in a way that but they inevitable facilitated that and they have ome really interesting decisions to phaeumake.

a small country, right? a complete authoritarian regime and they to go into vietnam they have it put the service there give them the names of people using facebook. same course china is the thing and zuckerberg is enamored apparently here although i haven't followed it recent recently. happen there? and what will happen in the laces they know like philippines, brazil, hungary tools haveknow their used for anti-democratic what are they going to do about it? a significant number of or tonight so i ere wondered what advice you would give to somebody who is very

in accountability reporting who, because they were here have great data journalism skills. program.a plug for the >> you know more than i do so it is hard to give you advice. here, it is going to come beat for years it and i wish i was that astute and doing it. >> james, you thought a lot students working in silicon valley. working udents end up at a social media company in enlo park what would you like them it take i think one thing right off the bat is just know your history and know the history of the company that you're working for, try to understand its prevailing and i think- ethos,

one of the things that struck me over the course of this project is how little appreciation for history there was. history of authoritarians using history ibad ends, a think of kind of the mindset of silicon valley and how that has changed, as well. i think in terms of venture toital, a lot of people talk us about the earlier days of silicon valley and the thousand embodied in a much truer idealism about the powers of technology, the bicycle of the mind. things like this, and there has been major shifts towards a much

more mercenary aspect of the thaty, and i just think what really struck me most in about thethis was people we interviewed who had companies, not ,nderstanding security concerns and when they grow enormous, and these are things that are just peopleand i wish more there was product design, whether it be the mental health aspects of that or the security problems that could be present in it. a lot of what we heard over the course of reporting is that various divisions of the company were not speaking to one and they keep

programming. they are not consulting with other people within the company that actually deal with real-world problems. that is something it has to change. it is something that these companies should be mindful of and that something that young people going into these companies should be mindful of, am i communicating with all of the people in the company that might understand how practically something i am designing could either go right or wrong. actually, we were talking about ethics and what was an analogy. is the defense industry and analogy? what are the ethics, that everyone who is a programmer, developer, should be thinking --ut, when they are billing

building that? when the drone makers built the first drone, i am sure they had no idea it could be armed to kill people and point strikes and what areworld the ethics of a doctor, the ethics of a lawyer, the ethics of 70 who builds a technology? >> so we talked before this winter -- the ethics of somebody who builds a technology. before thisked winter with a computer science worker and someone in the obama administration. there is a weekly writing requirement. some weeks, that is code, because there is a prerequisite to get into it, and it meets

four times a week, in part driven by people at sanford thinking how can we broaden the things they take into account and the jobs that they hold? so we are going to go to the unfettered lightning round portion of the evening, so i really appreciate the questions here, incredibly diverse. i am going to read the question and not guess who is going to answer it, ok, so you can just volunteer. first question. is there a google dilemma? [laughter] yes. >> sure, and i think when it what we are seeing,

huge swaths of our population, what they are seeing, what they , and theing accountability mechanisms. there is definitely a dilemma, because it is a service we are extensively getting for free, and we know there is a price, and we have to start putting a price on what that is, and no one has really figured that out yet. nda's inon says california is one concern, but isn't the real concern about employment blacklisting? so in other words, will you be hired if you go public? >> absolutely. people talk about an nda, and it was definitely blacklisting employment wise, but it was blacklisting culturally among

among their tribe, you know, the tribe that they respect, they like the people, they speak the language, and the -- >>ing >> or than it was much more than an nda, and what i am telling you is important, and you need to understand it, and there is no

other way for us to report it unless you help us report it and to tell it to us, and the bridge to cross was not necessarily an nda problem. it was more a cultural problem. reluctance to talk, because it is technical, and a lot of things are technical, complicated. they are not black-and-white, and we have to explain to the general public what they are doing, so i think that a lot of what people felt or the reluctance to talk may have been, are we really going to get the nuance of it? but we were kind of perfectly positioned to kind of do that more so than any other news organization, in part because we had two hours to do that, and we were publishing our transcripts, and i think part of it is issue,l with the mafioso

silicon valley, talk and snitch. need is something that we to acknowledge on our end, that tech reporting often can be wrong or problematic, because you are taking really complicated things and trying to part,hem down, so on our there is probably something we could do better to convince people to work with us. >> facebook spreads a lot of money around, so you will find former facebook officials. you will find them in think tanks in washington, or elsewhere, and those think tanks that a lot of underwriting, and there is disincentive. talk, about it. >> there is a lot of criticism, and many of the criticisms are that we are lodging about

facebook, i think we have to in fairness say it is true about news, as well. if it bleeds, it leads, and that is true when you click on facebook. that is the same problem, so i think people are feeling really critical, and i think it as to , and as aance reporting goal, we have heard this from a lot of people in news, that essentially our industry, the journalism industry operates in the facebook world, right? foras sort of the salvation the washington post and certainly commercial enterprises to find an audience, and so when you are operating as a journalist or an institution -- or in that world, you can find

your audience, but you could also be playing to their bias to some degree, or that might be what comes up first when you of some paper,p and that is problematic, and we have to do a better job as an industry of journalists and reporters, publishers, in thinking that through, but it really means to operate when there are a few outlets, a few distributors, facebook being a major one. >> so the next question relates a little bit to audience participation. raise your hand if you use facebook. ok. that applies to the people on the panel, too? >> yeah, yeah. question is, what responsibility do users have, given the knowledge that you shared in the film? yes?

it is not me. this is a question from the audience. >> well, it is certainly to be media literate and you know what is true and do not circulate things that are not true. film, oneend of this of the smart critics of the industry and i think is taken seriously in the valley for her critiques, she basically states the dilemma, which is that, yes, i have got a problem with their business model. i have got a problem with their data collection. i have got a problem with how this is handled, but i also have a problem because my friends and family are still there. the network effect of this invention -- effects of this invention are tremendous. as a communication tool, as a place to share things. i think each of us has that same dilemma, because as users, there is a lot of ways that -- i mean,

i do not know if it will work. there are numbers, whether they are true or not, that are still quite high in terms of how many users they have. >> and the market overseas is 90% of the market. facebook's market is overseas, and that is why the myanmar story is wonderful in a way in the kind of perverted, journalistic way and that it went from a closed society ruled by the military all of a sudden open, and facebook ends up being the major communications method, but there is no media literacy. there is no tradition of or anythingr truth that is approaching a nongovernmental truth, and so it becomes just a platform for abuse. reallymuch is facebook

liable for that? it is much more complicated as a question. like people are turning to you for a lot of help, because it says from your research, what would satisfactory change look like at facebook? >> i think on the company is not necessarily something that is going to work in a vacuum of a lack of regulation and a lack of a policy, and it is kind of like the principal of photosynthesis. company, as incentivized as it might be now to invest in the right things and making it a more secure, safe place for its users, it still does have market concerns.

it still has to grow and have users. i think we need to have a regulatory conversation, and i think there are a lot of proposals out there, but nothing happens in a substantive way without that. follow-up,is a great because the next question is what are the most important government regulations that you could into place to curb facebook? and these are different people. one is pencil. one is inc. -- ink. idea that ise particularly interesting to us right now is thinking about data differently. whether or not these companies should in some way be compensating users for their data. they need to disclose more what they are doing with their data. in a way,r or not -- we are talking globally about putting a price on carbon

emissions. we also maybe need to start talking about putting a price in some way on data and figuring out what the cost of it is to us that theseciety companies have so much data about us and what that means. so that is just one idea. >> well, in my just very local recommendation, it would be for any of you who are on facebook to get your profile. thathe information facebook has about you, so if you go to settings on the right-hand side, and you click on it, you will see the drop-down menu, and near the bottom, it is "request my profile," and you click on it and fill out the form, and it used to take days and now takes hours, and you will see -- i do not think it is everything, but you will see what facebook has ofyou, and you will see some

the associations that it has on you, and i did this with my students who were shocked, many of them, and how much it keeps and what associations it makes for you that you do not even make for yourself necessarily. no thank you, but it knows everybody who got that invitation, so now you are vaguely associated with those people, and it is just illuminating. i think the first step is for people to just understand more, which is why the film is good, because it is somewhat of a primer on this, just to understand more what is behind this and what do they know and what are other people doing with that knowledge to manipulate people, not just to buy products but to make clinical decisions. >> i think also the u.s. as a

benefit right now that europe has taken the lead for better or worse on their data privacy laws. and i think that that is an experiment. i think a lot of people would say it is a flawed experiment for all sorts of interesting reasons. favor --e costs really the compliance costs really favor the larger platforms, which may endup up exasperating the monopoly problem that we have. that is just one of many things. so we at least have the ability to study how that is going to play out to some degree and have a more intelligent conversation about what might work here and whether it would, in fact, have to be some sort of global regime that tackles this or whether u.s. laws or regulations would do. to make productive changes. companiesing media

often are fraught, because facebook famously insists it is a tech company, not a media company. i wonder, in talking with the people for your program find anple who were coming to area where we were advertising around content, and that makes us a media company. >> there are certainly a lot of people who think facebook is a media company because it is the largest distributor of news now. and then what do you do with that? do you protect it in the same way? a socialis responsibility, the idea that if you are talking about public affairs, there might be important stories that the market does not support but that help people. that is one of the reasons when if you looked in the 1980's or ,0's, there were two industries and in both of them, the owners

got psychic income for doing the right thing and contribute in, and sort of ironically, in silicon valley, the control rests in one person or in the case of google three people, so there is a question about whether they would see a sense of social responsibility. >> yes. >> a related question is what were we to make of the facebook $300 million commitment to news ? >> was recently announced you, if you are cynical, will say it is a public affairs thing. cynical, so i think there are a lot of people who do not realize the harm that was probably whoreated do support real journalism, and

it is going to report for america, local news, reporters who are going to local community newspapers to be journalists there and supporting -- actually, the money is going to great things. i have looked at that recently. that is a good thing. it does really change the problems that we are talking about, but -- >> i think still there is no remedy for the problem at news organizations. that was, in part, happened ,ecause of facebook and others and the audience was on facebook, and facebook knew more about the users or the readers of the various publications or the audiences of television news organizations than they did themselves, and so the whole revenue model of journalism has

been hugely affected by facebook. not know much about the details. it sounds like philanthropy. we probably do need more, and i do not know what the percentages from adme sharing revenue on facebook when it comes to articles. i know the washington post publishes on facebook. i do not know what percentage of every dollar of ad revenue is going to the post. know at first, it was minuscule compared to what facebook would take from it. that was their prerogative, but it was also hugely detrimental. this was a band-aid fix. we basically need to address the revenue problem in journalism. that is the important thing. and now for something completely different. why do we care about

anti-democracy content, if that is the will of the users and is found on the platform? >> i think that is a really interesting question and one that we talked about in various places, that there are a lot of people posting content in places like the philippines and support the president there, content -- it is an interesting question. i am not prepared to answer, but i certainly think it is part of the dilemma. it is one of the many dilemmas that we were grappling with, trying to figure out how to report. and have a much more black white view of this. let's start with the fact that we are a democracy, and i think it is better served by other democracies even though we have many alliances. they are very tight with authoritarian regimes, and our whole foreign -- not our whole

policy policy, but our and our goals as a nation has always been to promote the rule of law and democracy, so if we are saying and that question, no, it is not, and we are willing to change our big, strategic goals to say we do not really care if there are more authoritarian regimes, that is a huge difference in what our values up to this point have been. big part of what our documentary is about and what we need to face and need to grapple with is the issue of fake accounts, and others that are magnified different messaging. regime was using fake and it was also to

attack critics, and i think the issue of fake accounts is a big one, especially when it comes to amplifying antidemocratic messaging. >> two related questions. one, does facebook have the capacity to fight state led propaganda in africa, and the second one is, is facebook actually enabling totalitarian regimes, such as in vietnam, to suppress their own populace? >> well, they do not have the regulate or do much about state propaganda on their platform. but even that is something they are grappling with. even in myanmar, where the u.s. says they facilitated genocide,

they are trying to do something that they were not doing before, but they are not 100% or even probably 50% successful yet, so it is very much a work in progress, and they have said that they have hired -- they have doubled the about. is that what it is question mark they have doubled the amount of other security people to combat these problems? but the problem is they grew so fast that it is almost it isible, unless -- almost impossible to get your handle now -- to get your hands around every problem that was every country in the world, and that is both a testament to their success and that, andeople love the problems came along in every

language and every dialect, and here they are in palo alto, trying to deal with this, so it is a huge -- -- the issues in vietnam, i do think the question of how either state run media organizations or authoritarian states are using social media in order to push their messaging, it will continue to be an issue for the company, and it will have to be something that we continue to that is something that everyone kind of needs to get ahead of >> so as you are revealing information, and it is becoming part of the public discussion, a person in the audience would like to know, would this make a difference is

facebook is evolved -- involved in paying regulators? to influence regulation? not directly. that would be another documentary. >> i am assuming that is absolutely happening through the internet -- what is it called? most of the tech companies do acts with their names on it. they do it through a group that would be a great subject for a documentary, and it is very cleverly done to be low-profile, but they absolutely have everybody covered in the legislature that might have everything to do with legislation, and, in fact, one of my favorite examples of this is that in their washington office, which also keeps a rather low profile, the 2 -- it

is difficult to remember who, but they have staffers from both republican and democratic side who were key staffers to key regulators. they now employ them in the know, ton office, you do anti-regulation. to anthis film, we speak early lobbyist he was there in 2008 who said absolutely, it was a part of the company strategy before it really began writing checks. it was a part of the company to ingratiateder it with politicians, helping them with their campaigns. this was the new place where campaigning was going to be playing out, where you could connect with the electorate. the company did a lot of outreach, in order to essentially make friends and then have that leverage to say are you going to regulate us,

and the strategy was it is much less likely if they see things because of the tool for campaign purposes rather than regulate them, and that was an explicit part, according to a former employee, anna parton -- important part of the strategy. i think some of that has changed, but they have been instrumental or effective. , whoormer employee told us ,as very technically minded, having conversations with politicians, and often, he would be the guy we turn to in the room that the facebook or internet association would turn , and his line was that would not be technically which theto

politician has nothing to say, and so that is another effective whategy in order to say, you're asking for is technically isossible, and that something that was shared with us and another lobbying tactic, so there are all sorts of way they influence things, not just in writing checks. but perhaps that is changing. knowe person would like to , was there ever a worry about an illegal breakup of the company when you were interviewing people? were not fearful of the antitrust? >> no, no. there was, strangely, a real sense, even though the company has undergone a lot of really tough reporting and revelations over the past couple of years, a little bit of an imperviousness to things.

sureld say -- i am not whether they are really getting a lot of the message, and i think when it comes -- i am sure that their legal department is very concerned about the european regulations. i am sure that they are in full effect, thinking through a lot of the proposals out there, but from the people we were speaking to, it was generally a sense of, no, probably nothing major is going to change anytime soon. verys, we had a interesting two days at facebook, and we were very open about what we were looking for, which is basically their story. again, working with the military and controversial subjects, if you disclose what the story is you are working on, it is more likely, and you really want to understand and ifities of story,

they give you their story, you have an obligation to air it, and we went in with, you know, very sincere hope that they would tell us what it was like , right when the election happened, white when the russian thing broke. , andus what that felt like and,s not forthcoming, again, going back to the cia and that theyry, you know have been given this opportunity. why are you not taking it, so there are two answers to that. one is you just do not get it, and you are in such a bubble that you have not learned the basic public affairs lessons, or

two, you really have something to hide. impressed, working on film and realizing how different that is from print, very impressed with trying to let facebook people know their case, make their best case for themselves, and if you see the film, the best case that they make is not an adequate case. in fact, they end up looking very much like we saw them, you know, and we debated among ourselves is that even fair? is it fair to put them out like they actually appeared to us. right? because they did not come off good. >> at one point, we show a montage of everyone showing the same thing. we were too slow, and we really debated about that, that it was

mean-spirited on our part, but we typically do two a to three hour interviews, and they insisted no more than 30 minutes, like not 31 minutes, 30 minutes, and they were incredibly disciplined about that, and we were not used to having to conduct interviews like that. it made everything very challenging, and just in terms of process, when we arrived at facebook to do our interviews, we basically only edited our first hour of the film, and we were struggling, because everything is a struggle and a crisis, and we were thinking, what are we going to do? it would just be there story. this is based on these interviews and what we collect, and then we left, totally freaked out, because we did not get enough material to constitute an entire hour, and we did not get enough insight to create anything that would be in and of itself interesting enough, so we had to really rethink the whole way we are

going to approach it. >> and to me, that was yet another indication that they are not worldly, that they are in their bubble, and they do not understand the risks outside their bubble or how people outside their bubble operate. is, i have aestion feeling that you all are going out afterwards, and we will be anding about this event, one of the things that happens is i wish they had asked me and it is what you would like to know? this is the final essay on any exam here. i am curious what we should do next, because this is what we are grappling with, trying to figure out what to do next, so i am interested.

>> so that source solicitation. >> i think in the spirit of what we do, which is ask critical questions, i am curious what the critique is of the film. i do not know how many people have seen it, weather, you know, whether it is people who have worked there were people who know it intimately in some way. i am kind of curious from the audience as to what a potential critique would be so we can be challenged on that. it is just, i guess a little more probing into what it was like in the interviews at itebook, because there is -- was so fascinatingly different than any other place i have been, and i have been in some different places, and i kept having to check it.

are they really coming off so naïve? i mean, why are they coming off it because i am getting older, and i feel like they are also young, but, no, i have been around young people, my students, young journalists, my kids. they do not come off as naïve, so why could they all be putting up this show question why because we are here? i do not really think so, and there is one story i unfortunate cannot tell you because it is a security story that to me -- i unfortunately cannot tell you because it is a security story that to me explains things. the world they are operating in. it is a superike government. that is not really the right state,t a super nation

and it does not understand national security. it does not understand its strategic goals, aims, and how and what they produce when they are interacting with countries, real countries, and i am still kind of dumbfounded about it, curious about it. >> the good news is we do have professors grappling with that, including alex in the crowd and teaching at stanford, so if you go back five years, they will be able to give you more nuanced answers, so thank you so much for your stellar work and for sharing the story behind the story. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

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c-span's "washington journal," live every day with policies and issues that impact you. theng up wednesday morning, american enterprise institute president discusses his new book, "love your enemies" how decent people can save america from the culture of contempt," and an author talks about his new book, "how democracies die." -- watcho wash "washington journal" wednesday morning and join the discussion. announcer: the brazilian president visited the white house today to meet with president trump. the ap reports that the two leaders were supposed to discuss a range of issues during their first sit down including trade relations and increasing private sector investment in brazil and resolving the ongoing potable crisis